YouTube just announced that they will no longer be showing ‘dislike’ counts on their platform. In March of this year, YouTube started experimenting with changes to their dislike button and dislike count. This experiment was to help them confirm if having public dislikes negatively affected creators’ well-being and made it easier for smaller creators to be targets in dislike attacks. These speculations turned out to be true.

Following those experiments, they have officially taken away the ability for users to see a video’s dislike count. Although, the dislike button will remain. The number of dislikes, however, will only be visible to the creator within their analytics. Dislikes do serve a vital purpose, for viewers to share feedback and tune their recommendations.

YouTube wrote, “We want to create an inclusive and respectful environment where creators have the opportunity to succeed and feel safe to express themselves.”

It’s hard not to also point out the timing of this change, with Instagram recently rolling out the ability to hide like counts, in an attempt to help creators focus more on their content and less on the ‘numbers.' The battle to secure content creators between tech companies like YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook is only getting bigger. Earlier this year, YouTube launched the ‘Short Fund,’ which will be giving out $100 million in total to creators who post short-form content exclusively to their site. These battles between companies will only help better the support and backing creators have on their platforms in the long run.

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